White defensiveness

White defensiveness is a term developed by scholars to describe defensive responses by white people to discussions of societal discrimination, structural racism, and white privilege. The term has been applied to characterize the responses of white people to some portrayals of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonization, or scholarship on the legacy of those systems in modern society. Academics and historians have reported multiple forms of white defensiveness, including white denial, white diversion and white fragility, the last of which was popularized by antiracist scholar Robin DiAngelo.[1]

See also: White backlash
For the book, see White Fragility.

Definition

White defensiveness describes some of the perceived responses when white people have to contend with issues of race and racism. Various academics have proposed subtypes of white defensiveness, such as white denial, white diversion, and white fragility. There are also varied contexts and descriptions of what can cause the expression of this theorized defensiveness. For example, political scientists Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields have proposed that the examination of white privilege "triggers white defensiveness."[2]

"White fragility," as described by academic Robin DiAngelo in a 2011 paper, states that white people react to "racial stress" with an "outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation." DiAngelo theorized that this reaction served to "reinstate white racial equilibrium."[3] The term has since been analyzed in academia and described in media as a distinct range of expressions by many white people in a number of historical settings, and up to modern times.[4] The term is often tied to the idea of structural racism.[5][6]

Other academics, such as Julia Chinyere Oparah, George Yancy and Leah Gaskin Fitchue, have detailed ranges of, what they define as, white defensive responses in their works.[7][8][9] Journalist Peter Baker argues that "white fragility" can find expression in silence or shutting down, denial, accusations of reverse racism, as well as upset, anger or rage at an interpersonal level.[1][7] The latter individualistic form of response is not, however, to be confused with the terms "white backlash" or "white rage," which refer to exclusionary or violent group reactions by some whites to the societal progression of people of color.

White denial

White denial has been identified as a defensive response by white people, in which realities of inequality are denied or downplayed.[7][10] Among various guises, it can find expression in the claim that racism simply does not exist.[11] Historically, it has also taken more extreme forms such as the suggestion that slavery in the United States was a benign system or even had a civilizing effect on African Americans.[12] Regarding white denial, in 2015 professor Leah Gaskin Fitchue wrote:[8]

By its very nature, denial is a defense mechanism, a distortion of reality, a delusional projection to reshape reality in a way one desires to see it. James Perkinson's study, White Theology, counters white denial in calling for a "white theology of responsibility (agreeing with Cone) that a serious engagement with history and culture must be at the heart of any American projection of integrity"...

Professor George Yancy has spoken of his experiences of white denial in academia, and within responses to his works, such as his 2015 article Dear White America.[13] From her 1998 research, professor Julia Chinyere Oparah proposed that when "white feminists cease to respond to challenges from black women with counter-attack and defensiveness" that anti-racism efforts can progress "beyond white denial" by "acknowledging that white feminists, as individuals, often silence, ignore or otherwise oppress black women."[9]

Robin DiAngelo has argued that social pressure on people of color to "collude with white fragility" accommodates other forms of white defensiveness, in particular "white denial."[10]

One high profile case of white denial was conducted under the authority of Donald Trump in his attack on the teaching of Critical Race Theory. At Trump's direction in September 2020, the Office of Management and Budget, claiming that government workers were learning "divisive, anti-American propaganda," ordered all federal agencies to cease any reference to critical race theory or white privilege in any government training programs.[14]

White diversion

White diversion is a term, coined by academic Max Harris, to denote a phenomenon where white people may obstruct dialogue or acknowledgement of race-based discrimination by redirecting or comparing the subject to other social issues. This proposed form of white defensiveness can seek to reorientate blame towards people of color and indigenous peoples rather than address the role of white people.[11] Harris, a University of Oxford Fellow, suggests that when "racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed."[15]

White fragility
For the book, see White Fragility.

Academic Robin DiAngelo has theorized that, as the mainstream perception of racism implies a conscious "meanness," that racism's definition is the cause of practically all white defensiveness.[16][17] DiAngelo, who coined the term "white fragility" in the early 2010s and later released her 2018 book White Fragility, describes this fragility as a range of defensive responses by white people.[18]

Writing in The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh, a journalist and music critic, says that DiAngelo's interpretation "makes white people seem like flawed, complicated characters; by comparison, people of color seem good, wise, and perhaps rather simple. This narrative may be appealing to its target audience, but it doesn’t seem to offer much to anyone else."[19]

In a 2020 op-ed for The New York Times, journalist and political correspondent Jamelle Bouie argued that the recent emphasis on exploring white fragility siphoned crucial energy from white people inwardly, towards their own behavior, instead of funneling resources and time into exploring wealth inequality and other harmful consequences of white supremacy.[20]

In an opinion piece for The Federalist, titled "‘White Fragility’ Is An Inherently Racist Idea That Should Be Retired Immediately", Jesse Lile, an educator and relationship therapist, has argued that the DiAngelo's concept of white fragility places white people in a double bind, first enjoining them to engage in a conversation on racism, then treating any active engagement on their part as an exercise of white privilege, and finally labelling them as fragile when they object to their ideas being dismissed on the basis of their skin color.[21]

Carlos Lozada, writing in The Washington Post, says that "any alternative perspective or counterargument is defeated by the concept itself. Either white people admit their inherent and unending racism and vow to work on their white fragility, in which case DiAngelo was correct in her assessment, or they resist such categorizations or question the interpretation of a particular incident, in which case they are only proving her point."[22]

Economist Jonathan Church has criticised the concept, arguing that it rests on the concept of implicit bias, which Church argues is a highly contested and dubious concept. Church also argues that DiAngelo infers systemic oppression from racial disparities but she does not actually prove the link and her works lacks substantial, proven and rigorous statistical analysis for her to make such a claim. Church argues that if white fragility is what sustains racism, DiAngelo's work should contain analyses to determine this, yet she fails to do so. Church also argues that DiAngelo's idea is effectively unfalsifiable because she dismisses criticisms of white fragility as evidence of white fragility, which Church argues renders it nothing more than pseudoscience.[23][24][25][26]

Author and journalist Matt Taibbi spoke critically of the DiAngelo's coining of the term, suggesting it may be driven by economic self-interest: "A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts".[27][28]

History

European colonialism and slavery

Writer Genevieve Valentine has explored how white defensiveness has hampered meaningful introspection of the consequences of European colonialism. For example, rather than point to how the adoption of slavery and European horse culture by the indigenous Native American tribes was a desperate method of survival, it can be used as an equivocation, in a form of justification, as to other racial groups also being involved in the practices brought to North America by white settlers.[29]

Similarly, University of Oxford Fellow Max Harris has observed the phenomenon in the politics of New Zealand. Referring to this form of white defensiveness as "Diversion," some European New Zealanders deflect attention onto the pre-Pākehā settlers era before colonization, ascribing an unrelated guilt or culpability to Māori people.[15]

In 1800, a failed rebellion planned by slave Gabriel Prosser caused both a drop in support for anti-slavery societies, which had been petitioning against structural racism, and an increase in white defensiveness in the Upper South.[30] In the post-slavery United States, there has historically been frustration from African American communities at white defensiveness and its consequences causing a lack of accountability.[31]

Study of the phenomenon

Multiple studies have explored how white defensiveness, intersecting with whiteness, operates in areas of society, such as education.[32] Professor Cynthia Levine-Rasky's 2011 research showed how an unconscious white defensiveness is often present in traditional teaching candidates in the West.[33] White defensiveness has been academically examined within the context of post-election of Donald Trump.[34]

Types of expression

Reverse racism

A form of defensiveness can be an insistence on a relativistic view of history, where white people are also the victims of historical oppression and racism.[35] In the late 1990s, professor Paul Orlowski observed the emergence of white defensiveness in working-class communities of British Columbia, where investigating structural racism in the province led to accusations of being "anti-white."[36]

Terminologist barriers

Some scholars and researchers have pointed to the increasingly understood use and application of critical theory terms, such as white privilege or fragility, creating the potential for terminologist-driven dialogue which fails to properly engage the social phenomena involved with structural racism. In 2019, as reported by professor Lauren Michele Jackson, writer Claudia Rankine abandoned attempts to document conversations with white men,[37] due to her perception that the use of accurate terminology was actually providing somewhat of a barrier to progress and further enabling white defensiveness.[38]

See also

References
  1. Peter C. Baker (June 19, 2018). "A Cure for White Fragility". Pacific Standard. Most Americans will find DiAngelo's catalog of these evasive moves familiar; wearingly so for people of color, embarrassingly so for whites. Even for readers relatively wise to the ways of white defensiveness, it is usefully bracing to see so many maneuvers standing in a line-up together.
  2. Angie Maxwell; Todd Shields (2019). "Southern White Privilege". The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0190265960. In other words, the rhetoric of disparity can mask white privilege, thereby perpetuating the denial of it, or it can implicate whites as "beneficiaries of the inequitable distribution of social resources," which triggers white defensiveness.
  3. DiAngelo, Robin (2011). "White Fragility". International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. 3 (3): 54–70. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
  4. Emily Nussbaum (October 28, 2011). "The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto". New York. The sickening shot goes viral, inspiring a webwide debate that is classical in its dimensions, with echoes of schisms that go back to the days of the suffragettes: black revulsion, white defensiveness, and a spiraling conversation about institutional privilege.
  5. Zach Powers (February 10, 2016). "South Sound higher education leaders shake up what's comfortable to examine diversity, racism and privilege". Pacific Lutheran University. The afternoon centered on exploring the roots of white defensiveness and microaggressions, as well as ways to challenge racism in individual relationships, classrooms and institutions at large.
  6. Kim A. Case (2012). "Social Support, Privacy, and Isolation". Discovering the Privilege of Whiteness: White Women's Reflections on Anti-racist Identity and Ally Behavior (Volume 68 ed.). Journal of Social Issues. p. 92. The sensitivity and defensiveness of Whites that often occurs when race enters the conversation (Fine, 1997; Jackson, 1999) may leave White anti-racists to privately cope with an issue that is overwhelming for any one individual. However, one characteristic essential to making a reading or discussion group successful is participants’ willingness to learn about race and racism as members of the dominant racial group.
  7. George Yancy (2014). "Teaching White Settler Subjects Antiracist Feminisms". Exploring Race in Predominantly White Classrooms. Routledge. p. 67. ISBN 978-0415836692. Ringrose suggests that one of the main challenges of critical antiracist pedagogy comes from White defensiveness in feminist antiracist spaces and classrooms. But, in this instance, the usual White defensiveness — including shutting down, silence, anger, tears, denial, disavowal - was momentarily suspended.
  8. Leah Gaskin Fitchue (2015). R. Drew Smith; William Ackah; Anthony G. Reddie (eds.). Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1628462005.
  9. Julia Sudbury (1998). "Sisters and brothers in struggle?". Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation. Routledge. p. 214. ISBN 978-0415167314.
  10. Robin DiAngelo (2018). White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-0822325154. Perhaps the most pernicious form of pressure on people of color: the pressure to collude with white fragility by minimizing their racial experiences to accommodate white denial and defensiveness. In other words, they don't share their pain with us because we can't handle it.
  11. Rebecca Kiddle; Bianca Elkington; Moana Jackson; Ocean Ripeka Mercier; Mike Ross; Jennie Smeaton; Amanda Thomas (2020). "Pākehā and doing the work of decolonisation". Imagining Decolonisation. Bridget Williams Books. p. 44. ISBN 978-0822325154. Max Harris warns against letting this discomfort drive us into white defensiveness. He writes about four types of defensiveness - denial that racism exists; diversion, where attention is deflected from racism to a perceived flaw in Māori society; detriment centering, where we focus only on detriments in Māori communities and ingore the hard work of the Māori (for instance in securing land rights, or normalising Māori-centric health models); and lastly the demand to move on, that Māori should 'get over it'.
  12. David H. Ikard; Martell Lee Teasley (2012). "Introduction". Slaves to Racism: An Unbroken Chain from America to Liberia. Indiana University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0253006288. White denial of black suffering is not a new phenomenon. For instance, the dominant white mindset during the antebellum era - which is still widely held by many today - was the slavery was a benign and civilizing apparatus for enslaved Africans ... This pattern of white denial will most likely persist whether or not African Americans are open about their problems or a black man resides in the White House.
  13. George Yancy (2020). "Discussing the Backlash to "Dear White America"". Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 21. ISBN 978-1538131626. I was the target of my colleague's white authoritarian denial of my epistemic integrity. This phenomenon is not uncommon. White people presume to know Black people better than Black people know themselves.
  14. "Trump to Feds: Stop 'Anti-American' Training on 'Critical Race Theory' | RealClearPolitics". www.realclearpolitics.com. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  15. Max Harris (June 10, 2018). "Racism and White Defensiveness in Aotearoa: A Pākehā Perspective". e-tangata.co.nz. The second type of white defensiveness is Diversion. This is where, in instances in which facts about racism or colonisation are raised, the conversation is derailed through a claim that Māori themselves are guilty of some other wrong.
  16. Anna Kelsey-Sugg; Sasha Fegan (August 21, 2018). "Robin DiAngelo on why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism". ABC Online.
  17. Nadira Hira (August 22, 2019). "Why the Fight Against Racism has to Start With Owning It". Newsweek. The mainstream definition of 'racism' is when an individual consciously doesn't like people based on race and is intentionally mean to them," said academic, longtime diversity trainer and author of White Fragility Robin DiAngelo. "Who is going to own intentional meanness? That definition is the root of virtually all white defensiveness.
  18. Robin DiAngelo (April 10, 2015). "White America's racial illiteracy: Why our national conversation is poisoned from the start". Salon. Not often encountering these challenges, we withdraw, defend, cry, argue, minimize, ignore, and in other ways push back to regain our racial position and equilibrium. I term that push back white fragility.
  19. Sanneh, Kelefa (August 12, 2019). "The Fight to Redefine Racism". The New Yorker. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  20. Bouie, Jamelle (2020-06-26). "Opinion | Beyond 'White Fragility'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-28.
  21. Jesse Lile (2019-06-18). "'White Fragility' Is A Racist Idea That Should Be Retired Immediately". The Federalist. Retrieved 2019-07-09..
  22. Lozada, Carlos (June 18, 2020). "White fragility is real. But White Fragility is flawed". Washington Post.
  23. Church, Jonathan (24 August 2018). "The Problem with 'White Fragility' Theory". Quillette. Retrieved 2020-06-15.
  24. Church, Jonathan (21 December 2018). "The Epistemological Problem of White Fragility Theory". areomagazine.com. Retrieved 2020-06-15.
  25. Church, Jonathan; Pluckrose, Helen (2020-06-08). "The Flaws in White Fragility Theory: A Primer". New Discourses. Retrieved 2020-06-15.
  26. Church, Jonathan D. Reinventing racism : why "white fragility" is the wrong way to think about racial inequality. Lanham, Maryland. ISBN 1475858175.
  27. Taibbi, Matt (June 28, 2020). "On "White Fragility"". Taibbi Substack.
  28. Homan, Timothy R. (5 July 2020). "Matt Taibbi slams bestseller 'White Fragility' as corporate vision on racism". The Hill. Retrieved 17 January 2021.
  29. Genevieve Valentine (April 17, 2016). "Horrors Pile Up Quietly In 'The Other Slavery'". NPR. It's unfortunate, though inevitable, that some of the facts under discussion have lost historical resonance amid the long-standing cloud of white defensiveness. The fact that some Native American nations sought to maintain autonomy by adapting European horse culture and becoming slavers themselves is an object lesson in the trickle-down horrors of colonialism
  30. Michael Kazin; Rebecca Edwards; Adam Rothman, eds. (2011). The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. Princeton University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0691152073. As a direct result of increased white defensiveness, antislavery societies in the Upper South disbanded or declined. Meanwhile, in the North, a new scientific racism encouraged white residents to interpret social status in racial terms
  31. Brian Murphy (2018). "Project Say Something's Whose Monument Project". In David B. Allison (ed.). Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 255. ISBN 978-1538113738. Nothing is more important than listening during these public conversations. I heard the defensiveness of white people who did not want to be told that their ancestors may have been racist; I heard African Americans frustrated with the lack of historical accountability.
  32. Cynthia Ninivaggi (2008), Whites Teaching Whites About Race: Racial Identity Theory and White Defensiveness in the Classroom, Teaching Anthropology Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges Notes
  33. Cynthia Levine-Rasky (2011), The practice of whiteness among teacher candidates, International Studies in Sociology of Education, White defensiveness is common among teacher candidates (McIntyre, 1997a; Sleeter 1995a, 1995b; O'Donnell, 1998; Smith, 1998; Clooney & Akintunde, 1999). Emerging from a political agenda in which the language of marginalization is appropriated by socially dominant groups (Roman, 1993), this response is most evident among the traditional teacher candidates in this study.
  34. Ashley Van Riper (2019), "I'm Not Racist; I'm Nice": White Defensiveness, Silencing, and Refusal To Listen in a Post-Election U.S, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Journal of Student Scholarship
  35. Cameron McCarthy (2005). Race, Identity, and Representation in Education. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-0415949934. The current celebration of ubiquitous or essential "racial differences" (permitted by the discourse of multiculturalism) is itself already in danger of becoming an expression of rearticulated white defensiveness. By white defensiveness, I mean the relativistic assertion that white, like "people of color," are history's oppressed subjects of racism.
  36. Paul Orlowski (2001). Carl E. James; Adrienne Shadd (eds.). Talking about Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity, and Language. Between the Lines Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-1896357362. The findings from my research, corroborated by my subsequent classroom experiences, go far to explain the recent rise of "white defensiveness" within British Columbia's working class. That attitude can easily result in ugly behaviour ... a few days after a Vancouver daily printed a one-page article on the finds of my thesis, a student informed me that both he and his mother "were outraged" by my anti-white ideas
  37. Lauren Michele Jackson (September 4, 2019). "I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked". Slate. In a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Claudia Rankine cataloged her own aborted attempts to talk to white men about white male privilege.
  38. Claudia Rankine (July 17, 2019). "I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked". The New York Times. “They’re just defensive,” he said. “White fragility,” he added, with a laugh. This white man who has spent the past 25 years in the world alongside me believes he understands and recognizes his own privilege. Certainly he knows the right terminology to use, even when these agreed-upon terms prevent us from stumbling into moments of real recognition. These phrases — white fragility, white defensiveness, white appropriation — have a habit of standing in for the complicated mess of a true conversation.
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